PALMDALE, Calif. — The team that presents the Antelope Valley Vietnam Memorial is already preparing for the monument’s final public display during the Veterans Day holiday period at the Marie Kerr Park Amphitheater.
The final display coincides with the conclusion of the National Vietnam 50th Commemorative, a Department of Defense activity which has awarded special recognition to the Antelope Valley Vietnam Memorial.
“It’s bittersweet, but it’s time,” said Michael Bertell, the Vietnam combat veteran of the 101st Airborne Division who heads up the “AV Wall” citizen support committee.
It may seem to have just finished its Memorial Day run in neighboring Simi Valley, but display of the memorial, known locally as “The AV Wall” take months of preparation, according to Stacia Nemeth, Treasurer and Volunteer Coordinator for the AV Wall Committee.
“We start planning about a year out,” Nemeth said. “We have to do that in order to ensure that the public has the maximum benefit of a visiting experience.”
The memorial is the half-scale replica of the national Vietnam Memorial, one of the most visited sites on the National Mall in Washington D.C. Like the original, the AV Wall has the names of all 58,281 Americans who were killed in Vietnam during the United States’ active engagement in combat.
The AV Wall debuted for public presentations at Veterans Day in 2009. Its final display by the group that has presented it for more than 15 years will be at the Amphitheater at Marie Kerr Park in Palmdale. It has been visited and treated as a healing experience for Vietnam veterans, family members, and education for youth organizations and the public.
The final display of the AV Wall will take place from Nov. 8 through Nov. 11, Veterans Day observed, with the monument coming down at Marie Kerr Park on Nov. 12. The field of veteran organizations supporting the series of events ask the public to mark calendars for Opening Ceremony of the final display on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, at 4 p.m.
“This will be its 25th public presentation,” Nemeth said, noting the memorial has presented at Marie Kerr Park more than any other location, as well as locations across Southern California.
The AV Wall is one of five traveling Vietnam Memorial Walls in the United States, and the only one based on the West Coast.
It is the only 100 percent, volunteer-run traveling memorial wall. It has been staged and supported by a dedicated local community, sponsors, donors, and volunteers, according to Linda Willis, one of the founders of the Antelope Valley grassroots project to build the local Vietnam Memorial.
Willis, and volunteers from the Palmdale Playhouse partnered with local Vietnam War veterans more than 20 years ago to initiate the project after multiple showings of a drama performed at the Playhouse titled “A Piece of My Heart.”
“We had seen the national traveling Vietnam wall memorials come to the Antelope Valley, at Palmdale and Lancaster, and we said, ‘Why don’t we build a wall of our own?’” said Bertell, one of the founders of the project.
“We really didn’t know what we were getting into,” he said, chuckling.
Bertell and a small team of Vietnam veterans that included George Palermo, Gerry Rice, Glen Nester and others formed the core group, aided by community supporters from the Playhouse and veterans groups.
City leadership at Palmdale and Lancaster made initial seed donations, as well as most of the longtime veteran service organizations in the Valley such as the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign War posts.
Finally, when it looked as if the five-year project might peter out during the Great Recession of 2008, Bertell said, “I think with as much work as we have put in on it, we should give it one more try.”
A local magazine publisher, Linda Santana, suggested that Antelope Valley schools might want to participate in fundraising. Of the monument’s construction cost of $102,000, more than $20,000 arrived at the end of the drive in the form of pennies, nickels and dimes from schoolchildren of the Valley.
For nearly 10 years, the AV Wall has been an integral element of the national 50th Commemoration of the Vietnam War underwritten by the Department of Defense, and the group has been recognized for its participation.
With 2025 marking 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War, official 50th Commemoration activities are also winding down. So, too, must the veterans of the guardianship of the AV Wall, the volunteers of the Point Man Antelope Valley talking ministry.
The vast majority of those who served during the Vietnam War Era that ended in April 1975 are in their 70s now, with many past the 80-year mark. Setting up the 70-plus panels of the portable wall and all the components that travel with it has gotten done with a team of volunteers that is aging out of doing the kinds of construction activities the AV Wall requires.
Invitations are already going out to Antelope Valley veterans service organizations, to the city councils of Palmdale and Lancaster, and to area elected officials, including Congressman George Whitesides, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, state Sen. Suzette Valladares, and the area’s two Assemblymen, Tom Lackey and Juan Carrillo.
In 2015 the name was changed to The Mobile Vietnam Memorial Wall, but is
affectionately known as The AV Wall, because of its origination in The Antelope Valley.
The Memorial is updated annually based on information provided from the Department
of Defense. Signs + Designs in Palmdale made the changes until 2020. Heritage Signs
updated the Wall in 2025.
Information about final display of the Antelope Valley Vietnam Memorial can be found at www.avwall.org or by contacting Nemeth at 661-810-4007.
